Until I had a missed miscarriage, I didn’t know it was possible to miss one. I can see with hindsight that things were missing; the nausea and exhaustion I experienced at the beginning of my pregnancy tailed off in week eight. I didn’t know a drop in symptoms could be a sign that the pregnancy was failing. As long as I wasn’t seeing blood in my underwear, I reasoned that everything was OK.
I went to my pregnancy scan, confidently, alone. The sonographer, who was jovial when I arrived, grew quieter as she moved the probe across my tummy. There was no heartbeat. I learned the pregnancy had ceased weeks ago but my uterus was still holding onto it. It would, of course, have to end somehow. I was given a pamphlet of options to remove the pregnancy from my body (medication, surgery, or wait for it to happen naturally). It’s a personal choice, they said.
I wasn’t sure which option to choose because I didn’t want any of them. What I wanted was to have a baby in seven months, and possibly a doula to support me through the process—like Gigi Hadid and Anne Hathaway and many other mothers now use. I read over my options time and again, as though one might suddenly become appealing.
I also turned to social media (of course), where I discovered Arden Cartrette, otherwise known as the Miscarriage Doula. The role of the miscarriage doula (Cartrette is a leader in the field) mirrors that of a birth doula, but works in the shadow side of motherhood. They offer guidance and tools to navigate the physical and emotional toll of pregnancy loss. “My original thought was that there are doulas for those who are pregnant and for those who give full-term, live birth, but what happens when someone gives birth in the first or second trimester?” she tells me. “We should have access to doula care for those births too.” Like Cartrette, many miscarriage doulas have experienced miscarriages themselves, creating a kinship between client and doula.
As I scrolled through this new and unfamiliar world, my bleeding started spontaneously (option three in the pamphlet). On Monday, five days after the scan, it was uncomfortable but not unbearable. By Tuesday I was losing so much blood I could barely get off the bathroom floor. I was taken to the hospital, where they inserted an IV line and stickered wires across my chest to monitor my racing heart. When I was stable, I was sent to the maternity ward to wait alongside full-term mothers for another scan. The specialist told me it was “good news,” the “product of conception has passed.” Is that all this amounted to, a “product of conception”?
Discharged from the hospital, I was in a fog of morphine. As it cleared I began to question how I would move forward. What did I do wrong? What should I tell my friends? When will I try again? Should I even try again, if this is how it ends? I decided to seek the help of a miscarriage doula as I searched for answers.
I connected with Katie Rose Whiting, a London-based miscarriage doula who trained under Cartrette. Whiting—who once worked in luxury fashion—arrived at this work after experiencing her first miscarriage. (She endured a second while in training.) “I wanted to use all the information and tools I’d accumulated personally to empower women going through this type of loss, to bring healing and recovery where there is often trauma,” she says.
We met online several weeks after my miscarriage. The session opened with us each lighting a candle, creating a virtual cocoon between us. I found Whiting to be therapist-adjacent, a font of practical guidance who was also (as she herself puts it) “a bit alternative.” She looked just how I’d expected: flowing hair, smocked dress, stacks of rings on fingers dotted with tiny tattoos. I can’t pinpoint why but I felt instantly soothed by her, so when she asked me what happened, I told her everything—even bits I thought I’d forgotten. My blood tests came back normal and there was no underlying medical reason to explain why it happened, I say. “Like nature, not every seed is meant to grow, not every season brings a harvest,” she says. “Our bodies know which seeds are healthy, which are not and when the right time to blossom is.” In that way, my body, which I’d cursed for failing, had done what it is designed to do. It was an empowering take.
During our session, Whiting tells me about a process called microchimerism. Even in early pregnancy, fetal cells cross the placenta and enter the mother’s blood, where they can remain for decades—even forever. “They are literally with us and we are changed because of them,” she observes. It was comforting to think the pregnancy wasn’t completely lost into an abyss—that in a way, I could move forward with it.
Just as a more “traditional” birth doula might utilize massages or essential oils, Whiting too had a tapestry of tools to guide her clients in moving forward. She calls this process “an inner winter, a time to let go and replenish.” Some of her suggestions are practical, like informing me about the UK’s new government-issued baby-loss certificate. Others are best filed under “alternative” (see: yoni steaming). How useful you find them may depend on your openness to woo. Her focus is on “blood-building” after miscarriage, for which she formulates a bespoke self-care toolkit. Mine included foods that are rich in iron, supplements, and nettle tea. She showed me a toolkit over Zoom. They’re beautifully handwritten and colorfully painted “with love and intention for each client.” Nettle tea aside, it was healing to receive something handmade just for me—the very opposite of the printed pamphlet I was handed two months ago.
In a 2017 study, 97% of women who received doula support reported that it “helped” their miscarriage experience, despite it not having a tangible impact on medical outcomes, like pain scores. I ask Arden Cartrette if her work as a doula is being increasingly recognized. “Not only is the demand for my work high, but the increase in medical professionals who partner with me to provide support is happening as well,” she says. Today, she regularly gets referrals from midwives and fertility specialists.
Like the study, I can’t be certain my doula experience will change any outcomes, for my body or a future pregnancy. But it has taught me that my miscarriage was more than just a “product of conception.” My doula taught me that it mattered. It was here, in a microchimerism way—and in my heart. It always will be.